Blog

By Jeff Richard Jumping into the setting with Family Background As talked about in the previous designer notes, I'm not a big fan of the "zeroes to heroes" trope. I prefer playing and gamemastering characters who start in media res - that is, they already have a past and have communit … read more

By Jeff Richard On Zeroes to Heroes We all know the classic RPG trope - we make a character based on a concept, but when we first start playing them, they generally suck at doing anything. We fumble along through "low level adventures", fighting trollkin or rubble runners, until we've gain … read more

By Jeff RichardI figured in this set of RuneQuest Design Notes I'd answer a key question that we get quite often -"are you using the [pick a rule] from RQ [pick an edition]?"One of the mantras we have in writing the new edition is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." In RQ2 the main things that wer … read more

By Jeff RichardA few thoughts on RuneQuest combat...RuneQuest combat is a fundamentally different experience than in most other roleplaying games. First, and I think most commonly talked about, the actions in a RuneQuest combat correspond with what we imagine might actually happen in a melee - someo … read more

Chaosium President Rick Meints announced today that shipping was about to commence for the RuneQuest Classic Kickstarter, the reprint of the iconic RPG. The Kickstarter, which successfully concluded in late December 2015, commemorated both Chaosium's 40th anniversary in 2015 and kicked-off the … read more

Rune Magic!By Jeff RichardAs we've said before, a key goal of the new RuneQuest is to tie the mechanics into the setting of Glorantha and incentivize immersion and role-playing. At the top of the list was fixing Rune Magic, which had quite a few problems. The biggest was that an initiate had to sacr … read more

By Jeff RichardSo let's wade into some controversial waters, and talk about the decision to base the new RuneQuest on RQ2 and not RQ6. Initially, we had imagined that the new RQ would be a streamlined RQ6. But now, the final product is being built up from RQ2. So what happened?Three main things: Run … read more

By Jeff RichardAs we started to develop the design goals of the new RuneQuest, Ken Rolston, Chris Klug, and I had a discussion about "what are the key features of RQ"? Here are some of the conclusions (in no particular order):Percentage Skills Character SheetRuneQuest is Awesome and Elegant bec … read more